The Revelation of Eden Pruitt, page 21
“We seem to be in the throes of a chess match,” the woman answered. “The government of the United States versus Interitus. The Board has concluded that six of our prisoners are nothing more than pawns in this terrorist regime.”
Pawns were expendable.
Judging by the sudden pallor of Dvorak’s face, she was thinking the same thing.
“Two are rooks.” The woman crooked her eyebrow at them. “Or perhaps the queen and king.”
“There is no terrorist regime,” Dvorak said. “And you are a pawn. The United States government is an entire line of them.”
The woman’s mouth tightened.
Cass studied her, wondering who she believed—Dvorak or the government’s rhetoric. She knew things weren’t adding up. She’d admitted as much when she escorted Cass to his cell all those days ago. What was less clear was whether she continued pulling on the string. For all he knew, she decided to drop it. To shove the inconsistencies away. Human propensity for denial was strong. Confronting this level of corruption and deception required a response. Ignoring it could destroy a person’s conscience, so long as they had a conscience to destroy. He searched for her brooch, but it wasn’t pinned to her navy blue windbreaker. Was the piece of jewelry only for business suits, or did she decide to give it up?
For an extended period, they drove in tense silence—the rain relentless on the roof. The woman’s mouth was set in a frown, her brow troubled. Until finally, she broke the quiet. “Two months ago, an officer with the Chicago Police Department was found dead. He was on duty during the break-in at SafePad.”
Cassian sat straighter. She hadn’t stopped; she’d kept pulling on the string.
“Officials ruled it a suicide,” she continued. “According to the autopsy report, the officer shot himself in the temple. According to initial reports—redacted reports—the bullet that killed him entered the center of his forehead.”
Cass’s eyes remained fixed on hers.
The woman stared back at him, unblinking. “The Bryson’s case can hardly be called a case at all. It’s riddled with discrepancies. And an officer on scene mentioned a very disquieting room in their basement.”
“You’ve been busy,” Cass said.
“I’ve been unsettled,” she replied. There was a bite in each word. Her attention shifted to Dvorak, who was watching the lopsided exchange with a look of keen interest. “As Karik Volkova’s successor, and the new leader of Interitus, you’ve been at the top of the FBI’s most wanted list for years. And yet you sit here and say Interitus doesn’t exist.”
One corner of Dvorak’s mouth curled upward. “The rabbit hole is deep and dark.”
“Where does it lead?” Lady Justice asked.
Cass leaned forward, as hungry for answers as the woman with the assault rifle. He knew, in a general sense, where the rabbit hole led. At the end, they would find the man who sat at the top. The man who was pulling the strings. The architect behind Eden’s design. The one they had gone to Washington, DC, to find. His followers called him the Monarch. Dvorak had scathingly referred to him as Pater. Who this was, Cass had no idea. The raid in DC had interrupted this particular revelation.
Dvorak didn’t answer right away. Instead, she studied the woman and Cass as though measuring their worth. As though calculating what and how much to disclose. “You wouldn’t believe me if I told you,” Dvorak finally said.
“Try me,” the woman replied.
“Oswin Brahm,” Dvorak shot back, without taking so much as a breath.
Silence came in the wake of that name.
Bloated with disbelief.
Ripe with incredulity.
This was the last person he expected. And yet somehow, as the name settled, the absurdity of it lost its edge. He pictured the man with all his money and fame and privilege, as handsome as Cassian’s own father. Sometimes, the worst monsters came in the most polished packages.
“Oswin Brahm,” the woman repeated.
Dvorak nodded.
The woman’s eyes flashed. Apparently for her, the absurdity remained as sharp as ever.
“Interitus is a sham,” Dvorak continued. “Karik Volkova was a puppet. Oswin Brahm, his puppeteer.”
“You want me to believe that Oswin Brahm was the mastermind behind The Attack?”
“I don’t care what you believe. I’m simply stating the truth.”
The woman smiled a mirthless smile. An angry, aggressive smile. “Oswin Brahm’s first wife died in The Attack.”
“Disturbing, isn’t it?”
“Afterward, he poured millions of his own money into this country.”
Another nod.
“The public considers him a national hero. So does the Board.”
“He’s positioned himself well,” Dvorak said.
The woman’s hostile smile slid away. So did most of her coloring. She opened her mouth—as if to ask another question—when a deafening blast tore through the air. The van swerved violently. Gravity hurled Cass off the bench as tires screeched against pavement. The woman slammed into the van doors. Metal crunched. Dvorak screamed. For one disorienting moment, Cass was thrust into the air. The woman hit the roof.
They were rolling.
They were falling.
The van hit something solid.
Cass’s head cracked against the bench.
The world went black and silent.
Sound disappeared.
For a second. For a minute. For an hour. Cass had no idea. He only knew that when he roused, he did so to the sound of gushing water and a frigid wetness that soaked through his jumpsuit.
The shock of it jolted him upright.
An interior emergency light cast an ominous glow on the unconscious woman and a bleeding Dvorak, her legs submerged.
Water was flooding inside the van.
And they were trapped.
Cass kicked his boots against the bench. Dvorak joined him. As the woman groaned, they banged harder.
She opened her eyes—whether from the freezing water soaking through her khaki slacks or the noise they were creating, Cass didn’t know. She groaned a second time. Blinked once. Twice. Then looked around, her disorientation morphing into horror.
She fumbled inside her pockets and removed a set of keys. By the time she found the right one, she had to hold her breath and go underwater to unlock him. Then she moved to Dvorak while the water continued to pour, filling the van at an alarming rate. Cass pushed against the doors. When that didn’t work, he barreled into the doors—twelve years old all over again, trapped in a closet, his mother being pummeled to death outside. He gritted his teeth and barreled again. And again. Dvorak and the woman joined him. Together, they heaved and kicked.
But the doors refused to budge.
The water was up to their necks.
The woman was screaming, pounding, panicking.
Cass climbed onto the bench and told her to breathe—deep breaths in, deep breaths out. “Once the inside is filled, the pressure will stabilize and we should be able to open the doors.”
The woman nodded.
So did Dvorak.
He placed his palms flat against the van’s roof, then his cheek. He took one last, long breath and plunged beneath the water. The sound went quiet. Muffled. They swam to the doors and, with what strength remained, gave one last heave.
The doors gave way.
He pushed through the opening and swam.
All was dark and cold as he kicked his legs and paddled his arms.
His lungs screamed.
His boots were like leaden weights pulling him downward.
But he kept kicking. He kept paddling.
Up, up, up until he crested the surface with a loud gasp. Rain fell against his face as he swam to the shore, as he dragged himself onto the rocks. Dvorak and the woman followed—coughing, spluttering. Then collapsing beside him.
They were free.
He was free.
He had escaped from the back of a prison van submerged at the bottom of a river in the dead of a rain-soaked night. The woman shielded her eyes from the downpour and peered across the tumult toward the opposite bank. “Do you see the driver? Did he get out?”
Cass looked up at the bridge from which they had plummeted, its guardrail a twisted snarl of metal. And beyond that, fire and smoke billowed into the weeping sky. His mind spun. His blood pounded with adrenaline. Someone had set off a bomb. Who and why?
The woman took a lurching step toward the river.
Cass grabbed her arm.
“He might be trapped down there,” the woman said, yanking free.
“If he is, there’s nothing you can do to help him.”
The woman shouted a curse, blood and rain dripping down her face, then she ran her hands down her cheeks. She took several deep breaths, puffs of white mixing with the rain. Finally, she nodded at the road above. “That’s 495, where the Potomac runs east to west.” She set her hands on her hips and nodded over Cassian’s shoulder, into the trees behind him. “That way is north.”
The Potomac River.
495.
They weren’t far from Washington, DC.
“I need to go up the road. I need to get help.” She swiped at a lock of copper hair plastered to her cheek. “If the guard is dead, then I am the only witness. I will tell them I escaped out the passenger side window at the front of the van where I was supposed to be sitting.”
“Why are you helping us?” Dvorak asked.
“I took an oath to protect the innocent. He insisted I was failing on the job.” She jabbed her finger toward Cass. “He pointed me to evidence, and to my immense chagrin, it supported his claim. I went into this profession to uphold justice, not aid in corruption.”
Dvorak’s stare bore into the side of Cassian’s face as he squinted through the rain. “What if the driver got out?”
“He will tell them I was in the back and I will tell them I was knocked unconscious. You two got my keys and escaped. By some miracle, so did I.”
“They won’t believe that,” he said.
“I don’t have another choice!”
“Come with us.”
The woman shook her head. “I have a daughter. She’s four. If I go with you, I lose her.”
“If you stay, you’re going to end up like the Brysons.”
“It’s a risk I have to take. Now go. Hurry.” She removed the semi-automatic, which was still strapped around her body. She pushed it against Cassian’s chest. “Once they find out your bodies aren’t in that van, these woods will be crawling with dogs.”
34
Dvorak’s teeth chattered.
Cass clenched his jaw to keep himself from doing the same.
They were soaking wet. The rain was relentless. The cold had seeped into the marrow of his bones, but he kept moving. Soon, authorities would dive beneath the icy depths of that river and find an empty van where the prisoners ought to be. It was imperative that they get somewhere safe before that happened.
Dvorak had tunnel vision.
Bethesda.
They needed to get to Bethesda. They needed to speak with Amir Kashif, an employee of the NSA. Not a follower of the Monarch, as he and Eden and Cleo had suspected, but a spy. According to Dvorak, Amir would have answers. He would know how many survived the air raid in Washington, DC. He would know what was left of the Resistance—for this was what they were. He would know what happened to the other prisoners, the pawns that had been taken to a separate location ahead of them.
They trudged thirteen miles northwest, through woods and fields, along back roads. All the while, Dvorak gave him answers. She filled in the holes that had plagued him since he was captured and imprisoned. He suspected her willingness to divulge was largely due to the distraction talking provided. It seemed to keep the worst of her teeth chattering at bay.
Oswin Brahm was the Monarch.
This, he now knew.
Swarm was the name Dvorak and Amir had given his followers. Dvorak and everyone else in Washington, DC, existed to fight Swarm and stop Oswin Brahm, who was only just getting started. The Attack. The bombing of his own hotel. These were only a prelude to the main event, which she called The Great Winnowing. Genocide on steroids. One that would—if left unchecked—extend to all four corners of the earth.
When he asked her how Brahm could carry something of this magnitude out, Dvorak reminded him of the man’s power and influence. Swarm was not small. He had an impressive number of people on his side, many of whom wielded a chilling level of power and influence on their own. Then she told Cass about his army. The Electus.
The phrase hurled him back in time, when he and Eden and Cleo were underneath Washington, DC. Before an alarm started blaring and all hell broke loose. Dvorak had just told them that Karik Volkova—the most infamous terrorist of all time—was nothing more than a puppet. But if that were true, then who had created the group of weaponized humans? Eden had asked the question. Upon doing so, Dvorak’s attention had snapped in her direction.
“You know about the Electus?”
Now, Dvorak told him the Electus was Brahm’s army. But six hardly made an army, especially when two of those six had already been destroyed. It didn’t add up. Until the wheels of his mind turned a bit further and the ninety-three names on the pamphlet swam to the surface. Martyrs for the cause. Dead mothers and their dead babies. But what if the obituaries had lied? What if those babies weren’t dead?
Goosebumps crawled across his skin. Goosebumps that had nothing to do with the cold. Those babies weren’t dead. They were alive. They were Oswin Brahm’s soldiers, and according to Dvorak, the Resistance was set on destroying them. They currently had one in their possession. Or at least, they did before the raid. They called him the asset. Whether he remained in their possession, Prudence didn’t know.
As she filled him in, Cass tried not to panic. Did she suspect Eden was also one of Brahm’s soldiers? Did Lady Justice try to strike the same deal with Dvorak as she’d tried to strike with him? If so, did Dvorak put the pieces together?
By the time they reached the outskirts of Bethesda, the rain had finally stopped. The sky was lightening. She was unwilling to go to Amir’s house. He could not be compromised. He was crucial to their cause. So instead, they crept through the shadows of an alley in complete silence. It ran next to a street Eden had once stood upon, when Amir Kashif had gone off script. When he’d deviated from his normal routine and made a pit stop before heading to the diner. Eden had called it a private drinking lounge.
They reached a back door.
The outline of a small lotus leaf had been etched into the upper right corner.
The Amber Highway.
Dvorak was just lifting her hand to knock when the door flew open.
An old man on the other side jumped.
So did Dvorak.
“Saints alive,” the man exclaimed in a thick Irish brogue, setting his gnarled hand over his chest. “Yer not dead!”
He stuck his head out from the door. He peered past them, down the length of the alley, then ushered them inside like a twitchy ferret, pulling the whiskers of his grizzled beard.
Without words to distract her, Dvorak’s teeth had resumed their chattering.
“Yer frozen to the bone.” The man waved at them to follow. He hobbled down the length of a hallway—his gait stilted with a pronounced limp. “The whole thing is on the news. They think yer at the bottom of the Potomac.”
They stepped into a backroom where a fire crackled in the grate. There was a sofa and a sitting chair and a desk in the corner. Along with a television playing Concordia News. A female reporter stood inside the screen wearing a bulky rain jacket. Behind her, a slew of emergency vehicles flashed their emergency lights. “Amanda Hawkins escaped the icy waters, but so far, there has been no sign of her counterpart.”
Amanda Hawkins.
Lady Justice had a name.
“The van transporting two of the prisoners plummeted off the bridge after a bomb detonated on the road ahead of them. Divers are currently on the scene, but the conditions of the river have delayed the recovery mission.”
“The driver must not have made it,” Cass said to nobody in particular—relief washing over him. If the driver was dead, then authorities would have no reason to doubt Amanda Hawkins’ story. She escaped out the passenger side window of the prison van. Once authorities discovered the prisoners had also escaped, Amanda Hawkins would plead confusion. She had no idea how they managed it. The prisoners had been properly secured when they left the prison yard. Maybe Amanda Hawkins and her four-year-old daughter wouldn’t end up like the Brysons and Yukio and the security guards at SafePad.
“How in the blazes did you escape?” the man asked, pulling a folded stack of gray woolen blankets from a closet. He tossed one to Cass. He handed another to Dvorak.
She wrapped it around herself and moved as close to the grate as she could without catching fire. “He managed to get Amanda H-hawkins on our side.” She gave her head a begrudging tip toward Cass. “I n-need to know everything, Emmett. Wh-what was supposed to go down tonight?”
“They’ve been working on a prison break. They were supposed to ambush the transport vehicles and get all eight of ye to Alexandria.”
“Alexandria.”
“It’s the new headquarters. We’ve joined forces with America Underground.”
“Who’s left, Emmett? How many survived the raid?”
He scratched his bony chest, one corner of his mouth pulling down uncomfortably.
“Rip off the Band-Aid,” Dvorak said.
“Fran and Asher are alive. At least, they were before the prison break went sideways. There were six more survivors, along with Eden Pruitt and Cleo Ransom.”
